Archive for January, 2007
Filed Under adventure, comics, pulp
That last post turned out to be a lot longer than I expected, so this one’ll be short. I gots other stuff to do. Besides, I’ve told you about this one before.
Today’s pulp-inspired web comic is Christopher Mills’
Supernatural Crime. It’s actually three strips in one. There’s
Femme Noir, which is
about a mysterious blonde vigilante;
Brother Grimm, about a masked crime-fighter, and
Nightmark, a monster hunter. They’re pretty stock concepts, but Mills has a great feel for the pulp-style and writes some great stuff around them.
Filed Under writing is hard
I wish I could remember who led me to this article so’s I can credit them, but I can’t. It’s long and literary and I admit that I was skimming at the end, but the thoughts in it are worth reading and thinking about.
The author Zadie Smith equates fiction writing to the revelation of the writer’s personality. The better a writer you are, the better you’re able to reveal yourself in your work.
“A writer’s personality is his manner of being in the world: his writing style is the unavoidable trace of that manner. When you understand style in these terms, you don’t think of it as merely a matter of fanciful syntax, or as the flamboyant icing atop a plain literary cake, nor as the uncontrollable result of some mysterious velocity coiled within language itself. Rather, you see style as a personal necessity, as the only possible expression of a particular human consciousness. Style is a writer’s way of telling the truth.”
I like the idea that style (a.k.a. “voice”) is simply an extension of the writer’s personality. It simplifies the process for me to remember that a big part of my job is to get out of my own way and write the way I see the world; not how I think someone else wants to see it.
Where Zadie and I disagree is when she starts talking about the responsibility of the reader to respond to fiction as an Expression of Self rather than Entertainment. As an artist, I appreciate her encouragement to express myself and her reluctance to define success by popular acceptance, but as a reader, I think she takes it too far.
“These days, when we do speak of literary duties, we mean it from the reader’s perspective, as a consumer of literature. We are really speaking of consumer rights. By this measure the duty of writers is to please readers and to be eager to do so, and this duty has various subsets: the duty to be clear; to be interesting and intelligent but never wilfully obscure; to write with the average reader in mind; to be in good taste. Above all, the modern writer has a duty to entertain. Writers who stray from these obligations risk tiny readerships and critical ridicule. Novels that submit to a shared vision of entertainment, with characters that speak the recognisable dialogue of the sitcom, with plots that take us down familiar roads and back home again, will always be welcomed. This is not a good time, in literature, to be a curio. Readers seem to wish to be ‘represented’, as they are at the ballot box, and to do this, fiction needs to be general, not particular. In the contemporary fiction market a writer must entertain and be recognisable – anything less is seen as a failure and a rejection of readers.”
The end of that line of thought is that readers have an equal responsibility to writers in the creation of successful literature.
“To respond to the ideal writer takes an ideal reader, the type of reader who is open enough to allow into their own mind a picture of human consciousness so radically different from their own as to be almost offensive to reason. The ideal reader steps up to the plate of the writer’s style so that together writer and reader might hit the ball out of the park.”
I think we’re talking about two kinds of success here. She’s talking about artistic success, and I agree that it’s an important consideration. But I’m getting less and less patient with books that are supposed to be good for me and craving more and more books that just entertain the hell out of me. That doesn’t mean that I’m trying to “debase” reading by aligning it with “the essentially passive experience of watching television,” it just means that I want my time with a book to be well-spent. If a writer’s style is an expression of his personality, I don’t care how perfectly he communicates it. If he’s got a lousy personality, I don’t wanna spend time with it.
My job as an artist might end at Expressing My Personality, but I don’t think my job as someone who hopes to make a living through his work does. An artist’s job is simply to create art, but a professional writer has an added responsibility of entertaining the audience. That doesn’t mean that I should ever write for the audience (more on that in another post), but it does mean that if the audience doesn’t like what I’ve written I’ve no one to blame but myself. Blaming the audience for not meeting their responsibility as readers feels lazy to me. If I’m going to succeed as a professional writer, I’ve got to be honest in my style (i.e. my expression of my personality), but I’ve also got to tell an interesting story while I’m at it.
Filed Under adventure, comics, pulp
Sorry about not posting yesterday. Had a little family emergency. Everyone’s okay, but it had to be taken care of and kept me offline.
What I was going to post about was Humorous Maximus’ launch of Milton Caniff’s
Steve Canyon strips online and how it’s encouraged me to share some of my other favorite pulp-inspired web comics. I was gonna do one a day for the rest of the week, but since I’m a day behind now, I’ll do two today.
So, in addition to the classic
Steve Canyon, have a little
Red Kelso by Gary Chaloner. I got hooked on
Red back in the days when it was on AdventureStrips, a site that I still miss.
Red Kelso is not only fun, it’s well-written and suspenseful. Good stuff.
Hopefully, I’ll be back up to speed tomorrow on posting. I’ve found some really good blogs for writers and I want to talk and/or ask you folks about some of the stuff I’m finding there.
Filed Under birthdays, horror, mystery
Edgar Allan Poe was born 198 years ago today. Celebrate by entombing an enemy alive!
Poe’s one of my favorites, so I find it interesting and sort of encouraging that he got his start in literature by writing reviews. According to Garrison Keillor, “He first made his name writing some of the most brutal book reviews ever published at the time. He was called the ‘tomahawk man from the South.’ He described one poem as ‘an illimitable gilded swill trough,’ and he said, ‘[Most] of those who hold high places in our poetical literature are absolute nincompoops.’ He particularly disliked the work of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Greenleaf Whittier.”
Filed Under mystery, to read
Another recommendation via Bookgasm. Guillermo Martinez’ The Oxford Murders is a “high-minded mystery” about a murder that was predicted before it happened in a letter that contained “a time, an address and a bizarre symbol.”
When a math legend decides that the symbol has mathematical origins, and another letter with a new symbol arrives, the story’s protagonists determine to try and predict the next murder. It all sounds clever and fun, but what really got my attention is that it’s a “compact” book at less than 200 pages. I’m becoming impatient with overly long, wordy books, and as Bookgasm’s Rod Lott says, “it’s refreshing to see a novel – and a complex mystery, no less – that says what it needs to say and gets out.”
Filed Under horror, scifi
The Best Megaplex on Earth had a showing of Jurassic Park last night on the Ultrascreen. It’s been forever since I’d seen it, so it was great seeing it again on the big screen. I’d even forgotten that Samuel L. Jackson is in it. Kind of makes me want to see the next couple again.
This isn’t a review. I’m just bragging. Next month they’re showing Back to the Future and then it’s Jaws in March.
Filed Under adventure, scifi
I meant to post this yesterday as an update to the earlier mention of a John Carter movie, but ran out of time. Anyway, The Hollywood Reporter adds some details to the story, like the fact that Disney already had the rights to the property through most of the ’90s when they were hoping to adapt it as an animated feature (sort of like they did with Tarzan).
At some point, the project became a live-action movie and Paramount ended up with the rights in 2002. Several directors were attached to it at various times under Paramount’s care: Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids, Sin City), Kerry Conrad (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), and Jon Favreau (Zathura, Iron Man), for example. Apparently, Paramount let the property go last year and it was homeless until last month when Pixar started showing interest.
Pixar’s involvement re-opens the question about whether or not Disney plans to turn John Carter into a live-action franchise as Edgar Rice Burroughs’ estate says (and Variety reported), or an animated feature. Disney’s keeping quiet about it for now.
Filed Under adventure, review
I haven’t wanted to “watch” Force 10 from Navarone as much as I wanted to gawk at the trainwreck that I knew it must be. It first got my attention by having Harrison Ford in it, but the rest of the cast is mostly made up of ’70s “stars” who were all better known for other, particular roles than they were for actual acting talent. Carl Weathers from Rocky is there. Barbara Bach from Caveman and The Spy Who Loved Me is there. Even Richard Kiel, who played Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. All folks who were popular at the time, but who don’t exactly scream “quality.”
There’s also the interview I once read where Harrison Ford admitted that he took his role in Force 10 not because it was a good part or a good story, but because it was a good career move for him. It was the first time he was able to get his name before the film’s title in the credits. Purely a career move, and I can’t fault him for it, but it didn’t bode well that I was going to like the movie.
Surprisingly, it’s not all that bad. The worst thing about it is that Carl Weathers’ role is forced into the plot for no good reason, but more on that in a minute. The movie is a sequel to
The Guns of Navarone (starring Gregory Peck and David Niven) and I was concerned that
Force 10 wouldn’t have anything to do with
Guns outside of trying to capitalize on the name. Fortunately, both films are based on books by Alistair MacLean, so there’s continuity between the two. Robert Shaw and Edward Fox take over Peck and Niven’s respective roles and the movie becomes sort of “the further adventures of…” with their characters getting a new mission that piggybacks on another Allied mission being executed by a group called Force 10 under Harrison Ford’s command.
Carl Weathers is a soldier who gets caught up in the story as he’s being escorted to jail by a group of MPs who stumble across Force 10 as they’re trying to sneak off on their mission. The MPs misunderstand what’s going on and attack the heroes, allowing Carl Weathers to escape and jump on Force 10’s plane just as it takes off. It’s a silly way to get him involved and then he doesn’t really contribute to the story in a meaningful way afterwards. He’s there mainly to be racially insulted by the bad guys and to pout about not being treated as an equal with the members of the unit who are, you know, actually supposed to be there. Still, as poorly written as his character is, Carl Weathers is a charismatic guy and I always like seeing him on screen.
Harrison Ford is great as the no-nonsense leader who may not exactly lighten up by the end of the movie, but does find new respect for Shaw and Fox’s characters whom he thinks have been forced on him. Shaw and Fox are the real heroes of the movie though, even if they’re not the biggest stars. Fox is no David Niven, but he’s got his own easy charm and I liked him in the role. Shaw was the big surprise though. Mainly because I didn’t recognize him at first.
Even though I sort of had to grimace and bear through the parts of the movie with Richard Kiel (one of the worst Bond villains ever), that’s balanced out by the fact that Robert Shaw played one of the best Bond villains ever, the assassin Grant in From Russia with Love (not to mention Quint in Jaws). I caught on to it about five minutes before the end of the movie (he’s heavier and less blonde than he was as Grant, and cleaner than Quint) and it made me want to watch it all over again.
Which is something that I never thought I’d want to do going into it.
Filed Under adventure, scifi
I think it’s pretty cool that the day after I belatedly post the news about a possible new Tarzan movie, Variety reports that Disney’s just optioned the rights to start a John Carter of Mars frachise. That’s all I know for now, but it’ll be interesting to follow.
Filed Under fantasy
Looks like I don’t have to be worried about whether or not I’m missing out by not finishing A Game of Thrones. Variety reports that HBO is turning it and the entire Song of Ice & Fire series into a TV show. The idea is for each novel in the seven-book series to be adapted over the course of one television season.
A TV drama seems like the perfect way to digest this story that I didn’t have patience for as a book. Give me some cool scenery and special effects to look at and I’ll be all there. I’m not subscribing to HBO for it, but if I could preorder the DVDs right now, I would.
